Common WordPress Usage Mistakes

That You Don't Realize

Everyone makes mistakes, but when you’re just starting out with WordPress, there are some traps that are easy to fall into. To help you avoid these common blunders, we’ve put together this list so you can avoid the same mistakes many beginners make. Ready to begin? Here are seven of the most common WordPress mistakes to avoid when you get started.

7 Common WordPress Usage Mistakes

In today’s post, I’ll show you the most Common WordPress mistakes that I’ve Noticed from over them 10 years supporting WordPress users as a WordPress themes developer.

Use Any Hosting Company

Most smart business owners utilize websites and blogs to engage with existing clients and reach potential customers. While most business owners see the value of creating awesome content, the importance of selecting a good web host often takes a back seat. In my experience, most small businesses end up making a wrong choice in the beginning because they do not properly evaluate their needs and use a simple and cheap host plan, without a good response time, SSL or compatible with the latest versions of PHP. This does not mean that you need the most expensive web host, just understand your site purpose and the traffic that you can attract, after that do some research in review and people talking about the company that you’re using or want to use, all the companies have their social-networks today, so you can see what clients say as well.

Do Not Update Your PHP Bases

PHP 7+ offers one of the biggest jumps in performance we’ve seen so far from this particular software. If your web server is still running a previous version of it, (5.6 or less) and those versions are outdated since 2014, now, just imagine, you want to use the WordPress 2018 versions of some plugins of theme and your host it’s based in a code of 2014, you may find some errors as well, you may be holding your site back from working as well as it could and for this reason, keep your PHP updated as much as you host support.

To update your PHP you just need to access your website cPanel and click on ‘PHP config’ or something like this (it changes according to the host) and this will let you select the section that you want, you can always contact your host support team and ask for it.

Do Not Proceed With Backups

When should you backup? If you don’t have a plugin or a hosting platform running automatic, backups for you, the answer is: Always backup before you make any substantial changes on your site. Like WordPress, themes or plugins updates for example. If you do update part of your site and it breaks the whole thing, you’ll need either a) the ability to quickly fix the error or b) a backup of your site to roll back to, or you’ll likely face some downtime. You can find a lot of amazing free WordPress plugin to do this job for you, some good ones can be found here.

Do Not Test In a Separated Site Of Local-Host

As WordPress users progress in their career, their site grows as well. When running stable and professional websites, editing everything live is not the best option. To work on a WordPress site, we recommend our users to install WordPress locally on their Windows or Mac computers. Once you are done and satisfied with your website, then you can upload it from localhost to live server.

There is one problem with this method. What if something that worked on your localhost does not work on the live server? This would cause errors. So it can be a problem for established sites because it can affect search engine rankings, sales, first impression on users, etc. Instead of uploading your changes to the live site, you can upload them to a staging site on the same server. A staging site is a separate development area on your site (usually a sub-domain) with restricted access. This is where you can test your changes or use it for all your development. Once you have thoroughly tested your site, you can then upload it to your live site.

Maintain Unused Plugins

Every single plugin you upload and activates in your WordPress site take some queries and can slow down your site. In addition, a possible back-door that can affect your site security, so, always check your plugins section. Delete anything that it’s not really important for your site usage, and make sure that the remaining ones are updated so you can avoid this common WordPress mistakes.

Too Big Images Usage WordPress Mistakes

Images are crucial to your website. They provide visual cues for users and strengthen your brand identity. Photos are an integral part of an online experience. Plus, when your images are optimized for SEO (with descriptions and keywords on it), they can drive lots of new traffic (and boost sales!) Particularly if you have an online store or photography portfolio. Images are the defining reason users visit your site in the first place, right? Poor images is simply not an option.

In addition, if you’re uploading images to your site that are too large in size, they could slow page load time and, so, contribute to higher bounce rates and lost conversions. If you’ve ever reduced the size of an image, you’re likely aware of the risk. Damaging the quality of the image. So always optimize your images to keep a good loading time.

Ignoring Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements. However, when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site’s user experience. In addition to performance in organic search results. You’re likely already familiar with many of the topics in this guide because they’re essential ingredients for any web page, but you may not be making the most out of them. WordPress has a lot of SEO plugins for free to help you out at it.

Final Thoughts About WordPress Usage Mistakes

Those are some common WordPress mistakes. I noticed over these 10 years as a WordPress themes developer and offering support for a lot of users. If you take some minutes to work on it you’ll be able to avoid all these mistakes very easily.